Rutger

by Cari Silverwood

  Hilarious to watch the annoyance dawn.

  “Oh gawwwd.” He dragged a pillow over his eyes. “Show me tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow, though only a few hours later, Rutger woke again to find her squatting on the floor, looking at him. He sat up slowly, swung his legs over the edge, and smiled at her smiling at him.

  “What, pretty girl?”

  “I went outside. I can run though I’m still wonky. Teensy limp.” She held up her finger and thumb, close together. “I’m properly healed, or very close to it, and… I can see and use the Lure again.”

  Outside? Of course she’d gone there. It didn’t get through the walls of the cube.

  He nodded. It was good, but it did also mean Willow was going to want to tell them her secret. Yesterday, something about how she’d informed them she had one to tell had chilled him to the damn bone.

  Once they told Willow, her face fell into a familiar grimness, mouth firm, and he swore he saw sadness in her eyes.

  “I’ll take you up then. With enough of us to be safe.”

  What was she aiming to show them?

  Which was how, only a few hours later, they were trekking higher in the quarter, going around and around a metal set of spiral stairs built inside a vast well that looked as if it ran up about twenty stories past where Willow said they were going—the fifth floor.

  Why the fifth?

  This was War Quarter, which was an interesting name. If it came about from the usual, there would be a large number of gun shops here… Or a lot of ads for them on the edge of the quarter.

  Up the stairs, carrying their weapons, with the wing-soldiers flying overhead and scouting each new story. He was ready to aid Cyn if she needed it. Though the broom crutch had been discarded, she still had balance problems and a small limp.

  The beaster escort looked hyper alert and ready for battle at any second. If anything, Willow was being overcautious.

  He caught up to her, striding ahead up several steps at a time, leaving Cyn with Kiko the weaponsmith and Vincent, a half a flight of stairs below.

  “Have you reason to expect attack?”

  “No. Not exactly.”

  “Then, why this?” He waved at the heavily armed beasters.

  “This?” She glanced at him, her mouth twisting into a guarded smile when she realized he wasn’t letting go of the topic. “I’m nervous.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see soon. On fifth floor there is a good view.”

  “Uh-huh. So you’ve spoken to the beasters in this War Quarter?”

  “On comm only. They don’t come this low, the same as us. We’ll meet them but not today.”

  “Okay.”

  He let people pass him until he was once again beside Cyn.

  Vargr swept in and landed with a clang on the stairs, cursing as he did so and sending him a black look. The shadows on his face ran deeper than usual. “When we get up there, you will want to remember I said this—what you see will leave a scar.”

  “Oh?”

  He inhaled and fell into step with Rutger and Cyn. “Hearing about something bad is never the same as seeing. I don’t know how this was kept quiet.”

  That silenced them both. Cyn looked thoughtful and took Vargr’s hand. The contact of skin on skin could be far more comforting than words.

  He walked out onto the fifth-floor balcony with the others, Cyn then Willow to the left, Vargr to his right. Most of the rest of those accompanying them were strung out equally to either side. This was an edge of War Quarter. Before them the chasm between quarters spanned the gap from these buildings to the buildings of a different quarter with an unknown name. It was close to midnight, a dark time for humans like Maura, who’d stayed behind in Big Daddy with Mads and Locke.

  High above a predatory bird circled. An owl perhaps.

  He had the grim intuition that Willow was deliberately splitting up from Mads when danger was nigh, just in case she was killed. It would leave Mads to carry on.

  The bird dived, a black speck flitting across the night sky.

  “There!” someone said, as they stepped to the railing and glass at very edge, and they pointed. The gasps of horror began.

  To their right, in an interrupted stream, people were falling from above, silhouettes dropping rapidly and zipping past the level they were on, falling all the way down until they stopped, smashed into the ground. There were no sounds of screaming, only muted thuds when they hit. Some were arching as they dropped and stretching out their arms, as if they strived to march upward to where the Lure called them—to the Top.

  A multitude of curses reached him, a backdrop to this evil.

  “Jesus.”

  “Fuck.

  “Oh my god. Oh my god, no. No!”

  “What can we do?!”

  Nothing.

  This might have been one of those clever flick-the-page drawings with stick figures. It wasn’t.

  It was the silence of these soon-to-be dead that bothered him most. The silence wormed in. Cyn’s mouth was open and yet she said nothing, her eyes clearly following the line of the falling. He moved behind her, placed his hands on her shoulders.

  “Why,” she finally asked of Willow, shaking her head as she said it.

  “I don’t know. All I can say is that something is happening above, where we cannot see. Something bad.”

  As if it could be worse than millions of humans being eaten by aliens.

  “There must be a reason,” Cyn insisted. “Are they being pushed or are they accidentally led on some path that goes to the edge. Is the Lure doing this?”

  Willow wrung the round railing with both her fists. “That is what I want to find out.”

  How could they?

  “I have never said this before,” Rutger began, quietly. He wasn’t quite sure why he wanted to say this. “I kept it locked away from myself even. It’s a part of my life I decided to give up, but I was raised by several foster families, and each of them had a different religion they believed in absolutely.”

  Cyn looked up at him, sliding up her hands to cover his where they lay on her shoulders.

  “This,” he continued, “I’m sure would be regarded as Hell on Earth by all of them. Even the ones who did not believe in a Hell.”

  A great silence lowered as all of them absorbed this tragedy they could not stop, even as it continued with more dying each second.

  Someone wept loudly, gasp-crying as if they could not breathe.

  “This is why I propose to go upward to below the Top, short of there by a few stories,” Willow said firmly.

  What?

  “We found a drone inside a compartment in Big Daddy, and Locke has devised a way for us to launch it and see what it sees and to record. We’re going to find out what is really happening at the Top.”

  That was a stunning statement. For five years they’d been ignorant of what the Ghoul Lords were doing to the people they’d trapped. Only Cyn had brought back news, and much of that had been lost due to her amnesia.

  “I… remember terrible things up there.” Cyn shivered, and he felt it where she touched his body, and her hands tightened on his. “There were piles of bodies, stripped bones, blood…” Again she shook. “I’m with you, all the way.”

  “Okay.” Willow turned to assess her then said quietly, “Would you be okay with doing this in twenty-four hours? I have been holding onto this information for days already.”

  And she flicked her gaze to him for a moment—as if he could stop Cyn. Well, he might be able to, by tying her down.

  “She can judge.”

  “I am okay with that, yes. I have a slight limp, but I’m close to back to normal, whatever my normal is.”

  At that he couldn’t help looking at the back of her wrist where it curved over where she held his hand. Those red scales reminded him of many things, and some of them he was sure were impossible. Normal was no longer the norm.

  A quote came to him, his mind urged him to say it.


  People were falling, thousands, before his eyes, though he refused to follow their flight path to the ground. Every word they said, every flickering figure, marked a death.

  This compelled him to speak.

  “Those who the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” This would not drive him insane, but Hieronymus Bosch with his paintings of macabre hells with tortured people would have been thoroughly inspired.

  Vargr clapped him on the shoulder and left his hand there, gripping hard. Cyn turned in his arms and hugged him.

  “I’m not mad like the quote says,” she said into his chest before she looked up. “I’m just mad. Fucking mad. We will do this, and we will end this war, take back our planet and murder every one of those aliens above who are trying to destroy us.”

  “Amen,” added Vargr.

  “You are sure you are well enough?” He had to check.

  “I have my mojo back, Rutger, Vargr.” She smiled like the deadly, kickass babe she was, and showed her teeth. “I wanna blow away some bad motherfucker aliens.”

  “Yeah, baby. Yeah,” Vargr breathed. “They do not know what is coming for them.”

  * * * * *

  Which was how it came to be that he stood with Cyn and Vargr at the back of the assembled members of this small part of the beast horde. He listened to Willow give a grand speech about how they were about to embark on the first stage of their renewed attack on those who dared to violate this Earth—their beloved Earth.

  The hall was on the first floor of War Quarter. The moon had risen and shone in through many small square windows just below the twenty-foot-high ceiling. Whether by chance or not, moonlight cast a strong shaft of light over the stage where Willow stood before a podium. The wall behind her was blood red. She wore a white, long-sleeved smock, and pale gray tights. The sleeves trailed cloth as if mimicking medieval princess fashion. Against the red wall, she brought to mind an avenging angel, if it wasn’t for her rabid speechifying.

  He smiled.

  The speech itself and her shouting, those reminded him of a radical dictator. The arm gestures nailed it. This event deserved that sort of crazy speech. Who wouldn’t yell and spit and carry on?

  He’d never seen her so worked up, but if this was the beginning of the end—of them finally taking the initiative in this terrible game of genocide the Ghoul Lords were playing, he’d do anything. Fucking anything.

  They must win. Must.

  The hall echoed with her words, and the crowd became restless, stirred by her vehemence until they too shouted, raised their arms and shook them, vowing allegiance to this renewed cause.

  “We will take back Earth from the invaders!” she screamed.

  Rutger whipped around and arm-wrapped first Cyn—hoisting her higher so he could kiss her cheek and squeeze her—then Vargr, except he couldn’t pick that heavy beaster up. He felt the wings ruffle where his arm fell across Vargr’s back.

  He kissed Vargr’s cheek too, loudly. “Let’s fucking do this!”

  Vargr chuckled then hugged and kissed him back, just as wetly and loudly. “Anything to get you to stop putting those lips on me!”

  “Hell, yeah,” Cyn added in a quieter tone. “We do this, and we watch each other’s backs. And Willow’s, especially her. I think she’s more important to this than anyone.”

  Though he nodded, he disagreed. Cyn was more important. And Vargr… He was beginning to feel as if they were inextricably bound together. All three of them.

  He’d heard Cyn say a few times how bondmating was just chemicals, but it no longer was, not to him. He hugged them both, tighter, inhaling their mingled scents.

  Chapter 21

  So this was what it was to be a cog in an army, a mere soldier. Willow had taken to ordering people about like a mermaid took to water. A mermaid with pretty blue hair and blue, swirly patterned arms. Cyn had been told to stay at the back, so here she stayed.

  It had taken a day to get up here in relays, with the wing-soldiers flying people up in stages through the bigger stairwells. Half this force was winged, half foot. Mads was with them this time purely because Willow needed his wings. Rutger had been left behind because he was too heavy. He’d told her of his theory that Willow was not letting both her and Mads be with her if there was too much danger. That made sense because those two were the people from Worshipper Quarter who were already thought of as the bosses.

  Not really democratic, but few in this beaster horde seemed willing to lead.

  She wasn’t even sure Mads wanted to do much more than follow Willow about.

  They’d spent a few hours to get organized here, in what must have been a childcare facility.

  The chair she sat on was orange plastic and made for a ten-year-old, but it’d taken her weight. It amused her to sit on a silly chair.

  Thank whoever was above, there were no kids lying dead in here. Little skeletons would’ve slain her, unhinged her sanity, cracked to pieces what was left of her niceness. She was already in love with death too much—the death of her enemies.

  While they ascended, the falling people had stopped going over the edge. The drone was still going to be sent up. Seeing what happened up Top—that idea had sucked them in. Nothing was stopping this.

  The beaster drone operator, a male foot-soldier, was up at the front, testing the flight of the dark blue drone. The bright moonlight outlining the silhouette of the beaster made her squint; she was that accustomed to seeing in the dark.

  She held her hand up to shadow her eyes, and found Vargr sauntering back, his wing tips trailing through the leftover toys and the white sheets of paper with crayon drawings that lay on the floor. Part of the left wall still held six or seven more of those drawings thumbtacked to a corkboard.

  A mobile of cute plastic animals spun idly over a cot, stirred by the breeze coming in the window, and Lego was scattered over a rug nearby. Not even tough beasters dared to walk there.

  Maura had really wanted to come, and Cyn had overheard her pleading with Willow. When she’d been refused, she’d told Willow she was going to inject herself with nanites. That was a startling idea, if obvious in hindsight.

  Why not? If a human could say yes, why not? It would give them the beaster ability to resist the Lure, and strength, and whatever else those nanites could give.

  She’d thought Willow would say yes.

  But she hadn’t. Maura wasn’t even sure which nanites she would choose.

  “You think about this some more. We don’t yet know what we are. Wait until we’ve at least checked through the papers in Big Daddy before you decide. You should know what you’re heading for.”

  As always, what Willow had said was sensible. For now, Maura was safe with being bondmated.

  “Ready?” Vargr said, waking her from her thoughts. “Happy with how you can do whatever it is you do with the Lure?”

  “I’m good. Practiced and practiced, yeah.” Cyn cracked her knuckles then let her hand rest on the gun where it was holstered beside her leg. She had her golden nemesis gun back again. She really wanted to give it a name, but nothing had come to her that seemed right. Yet.

  Ghoul fucker-upper just wasn’t that catchy. A pretty gun needed a pretty name.

  She was very good with the Lure, maybe better at weaving it than before, now she was whole. Whole apart from that limp. Willow had completed a check and no fragments remained. Neurological, Vincent had suggested.

  Memory pain even.

  She’d never heard of those.

  “You?” she asked Vargr.

  “Anything comes for you. It’s dead.” He clicked his tongue and winked.

  “Thank you, Mister Bodyguard.”

  He ruffled her hair then turned to look outward, the same as she was doing, standing at ease by her side. Her bodyguard, Willow had named him. She smiled, curious at her own reactions, amused even. Just a touch from one of her guys brought that happy glow.

  It didn’t last long.

  She leaned forward, her hands clasped betwe
en her knees, glowering at that long window section, agitated because she wanted everything to happen, now. Violence might be coming. She’d swear she could sense it. If any stinkers leaped through those windows, she wanted to shoot them before Vargr, before anyone.

  The buck of her gun in her hand, the crackle as the bolt electrocuted the air, the spray as it hit bad things…

  Yes.

  She was the official Slayer of the Lure also. If need be. Not that it was likely a Ghoul Lord would pay a visit. The last time it had been because she’d provoked one, she figured. She was fairly sure it’d been the same one she’d cut. It’d felt the same, inside its head. If offered a second chance at one, she’d cut off another damn tentacle.

  “You know you’re in need of fucking? It’s been too long.” Vargr broke her vicious reverie.

  “What? No, I didn’t know, but this is not the time. How can you tell?”

  As if she had a clock on her forehead.

  He spread his legs in that arrogant male way, sucked on his cheek, thinking.

  “Scent? Pheromones, I don’t really know but I’m right. Swallowed come may not last as long as proper fucking.” He looked down at her, and she definitely detected a smug expression. “Of all the things that could go wrong, you succumbing to the Lure is one of the worst. I spoke to her. Willow is delaying until we do this.”

  Cyn buried her face in her hands, swept them up and flipped back her hair, exasperated. “I’m okay, I swear.”

  “You’re not. Come on.”

  “They’ll all be watching, listening, and it’s nighttime when I’m most resistant. No.” She folded her arms and prepared to sit this out. “I’m fine.” She was expert enough with the Lure to be able to fend it off, if, if something happened.

  Vargr sighed, swiveled to stare her down. He took one stride and scooped her up and flung her over his shoulder, then he marched for the exit.

  Oh for fuck’s sake. Given a choice of screaming, beating his brains in with her pistol butt, or doing nothing… she chose nothing. Apart from muttering, “Asshole.”

  That only made him chuckle and smack her butt, hard.

  His wings opened, fluttered down, covering her head. She blew a feather off her face and thought about plucking a few. He probably wouldn’t like that.